Tough Justice: Countdown Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  There was no way he was going to have a conversation with his father in front of Jennifer.

  “We were just leaving,” he said.

  “Of course. Thank you again for everything you did for my dear friend.” He shook Nick’s hand warmly, which somewhat freaked him out. But of course: there was an audience.

  “It was nothing,” Nick said, and headed with Jennifer toward the elevators.

  When they got in, she said, “Your father seems really nice. Why didn’t you introduce me?”

  Because you don’t ever want to be on his radar, or in his debt. “He would have felt obliged to take the time to ask you about yourself when I know he wants to concentrate on Trevor.” He almost choked on saying his first name. First names made his father’s cronies seem almost human. Which none of them were.

  “Of course,” Jennifer said. “I’m happy he’s going to be okay.”

  He could see her nodding in the distorted reflection of the elevator door. He didn’t want to tell her that the doctor had said no such thing, and wondered why she was so invested in a man she’d only met hours ago. So he just agreed. “Yup.”

  * * *

  They got back to the office at nine-thirty. The countdown clock was still moving faster than they’d like, but Nick was the only one looking at it.

  As soon as he took his jacket off and made to sit down, Xander started to update him.

  “I can’t find Beckett Clarke. He’s a ghost in the wind. I mean, he’s either a master of disguise and going off the grid, or he’s not. And you know what that means.”

  It meant that he’d been taken, or was already dead. “Let’s get Missing Persons on it. Okay, we have Ms. Porterini, Victoria and James’s brother on the target list, and then Benjamin Johnson, and possibly Beckett Clarke on the victim list. Their paths must have intersected at some stage with the Whisperer.”

  “I’ve got nothing. And I’ve been all over it,” Xander said.

  Nick stretched out his fingers, because the urge to fist them was almost unbearable. “What do we know about Beckett Clarke?”

  Xander flipped a file onto the main screen. “He moved from BrainWave to Commsteker Inc. Great employee. Director of Operations—which still includes recruitment—never misses a day of work. Everyone seems to like him. He’s been driving the company forward in an ‘expeditious yet careful’ way—That’s his boss talking. His boss, the CEO, received this email from him two days ago.”

  Nick read it. It was nothing unusual.

  Decided to take a few days personal time. I’ll be back on Monday.

  Xander continued. “The problem is, is that directors don’t just skip off without rearranging meetings, clearing diaries or getting people to stand in for them. It would almost have been better to claim sickness.”

  “Does he have any social media?” Nick asked, sitting down.

  “Yup. He’s in his late thirties, so all he has is Facebook and Twitter. I couldn’t check for BrainWave’s social media platform, TalkTank, because the FBI seems to have blocked access to the site. But it’s generally teenagers and people in their early twenties who use that. I’ll double-check when I can get on.”

  “The FBI doesn’t usually block social media platforms, unless it senses a virus or something.” Nick frowned and looked around. “Where’s Christina?”

  “Right here,” she replied as she swung through the door holding a tablet and a cell phone.

  “We can’t seem to get hooked up to TalkTank from here. Has it been blocked?” Nick asked.

  “That’s what I was coming to tell you. TalkTank is down. Like dead in the water. It’s unprecedented. All their servers have gone dark. No email, no website, no TalkTank. Look.” She flicked a switch and three network news shows came up. CNN’s ticker tape running across the bottom of the screen said “millions of users left in the dark as TalkTank goes off-line, and Prentice, Aoki and Mapson, the founders of TalkTank, have no comment.”

  Fox News anchors were laughing and wondering what teenagers would do today when they weren’t able to post selfies, or photos of their food. And MSNBC was wondering if it was a conspiracy. But everyone was talking about it.

  “They have over eighty million users worldwide. And the vast majority of those people exclusively use TalkTank to communicate. They probably haven’t written an email in years. In tech terms, this is Armageddon,” Christina said.

  Nick scoffed. “What does that mean? People can’t TalkTank each other for a while? How is that Armageddon?” He leaned back in his chair and spun it gently in a semicircle. This is why he only used email, text and cell phones. And frankly, he’d be fine if all of them went down.

  “BrainWave is one of the most stable stocks on the NASDAQ. If it starts trading erratically, it will severely affect the market.” She looked at her wrist, which held no watch. “I’d say they have about two hours to fix it, or the Asian markets will start going crazy. They earn billions a day on advertising and the through-access TalkTank gives to other media. To lose that only for a few hours will decimate the share price, which would result in the loss of billions.”

  “So you’re saying, now is the time to call our brokers?” Nick said.

  “No. That time has passed already.” Christina smiled, probably knowing that none of them were paid enough to need a broker. Except...he wondered how his father was dealing with it. Practically all his wealth came from investments. It wouldn’t surprise him at all to find out that Daddy dearest was in deep with BrainWave.

  He stopped smiling. But not for that reason. “Shit.”

  “Yes,” Christina said. “I would lay a bet—even in this uncertain market—that the Whisperer is behind this. Which means he’s way more tech-advanced than I gave him credit for. If it’s him, we need to totally reconsider all our leads, and the profile. If he hacked BrainWave, we’re looking at an immense capability that exceeds even mine.”

  Xander hung up. “Their phone servers are down, too. I could only get hold of Terra Mapson on her cell. She is not happy. Everything is down. Not just TalkTank, but the whole of BrainWave, its auxiliary servers, and even those they house overseas.” He tipped his head. “Which makes me wonder why they have servers in Moldova. I suspect she didn’t mean to tell me that, but she was totally freaking out. Basically, everything is gone. Their backup servers, everything. She can’t even get into the intracompany email system.” He pulled a face. “Looks like Talk just Tanked.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “So we don’t have TalkTank. Can you pull up Beckett Clarke’s Facebook page then? Let’s focus people. We’re on the clock here.”

  Ty opened the door and looked at the empty coffee pot sitting on the conference room table. “Hey, Jenn. How about coffee then?” he said as he sat down.

  Jennifer made as if to get up, but Nick stopped her with a raised hand. “No. If you’re not capable of making your own coffee, I’m going to have to start wondering if you’re capable of being an agent.” He raised his eyebrows at Ty. Damn but he was over this propensity for people in this unit pretending—or otherwise—to be lone wolves.

  Silence fell across the room. Xander stared at his PC as if the answer to the universe itself was on the screen. Christina inched toward the door. Nick raised his hand again to stop her, too.

  Jennifer spoke up. “It’s okay. I... I could use a coffee.” She got up, grabbed the pot and rushed from the room.

  “Dammit, Ty. Enough is enough. If you can’t be a team player, I have no use for you here.” Nick could feel heat rising in his chest. He clenched his fists. “Jennifer has had a really tough day. Could you even see how pale she was? Do you even know when your partner isn’t herself? Do you care? How can I expect you to have her back in the field if I can’t trust you to see when she needs help in the office?”

  Ty looked aghast. “I didn’t mean—”

 
“Yes, you did.” Nick paused, trying to put his anger at his father and his frustration with Lara behind a mental wall. He softened his voice. “No one will think you’ve forgotten Mei if you embrace Jennifer as your partner. It’s hard. It’s supposed to be hard. But we don’t have the luxury of allowing our own personal emotions to get in the way of work. If we do, we’re letting the citizens of this city down. Those people we swore to serve? They expect more of you. I expect more of you, and Jennifer deserves more from you. Stop punishing her for something that has nothing to do with her. It was—”

  “My fault. I know,” Ty said in a low voice.

  What? Nick was too stunned to say anything.

  “I don’t object to Jennifer because she isn’t Mei. I object to her because I’m scared I’ll let her down the same way I let Mei down.”

  “Jesus, Ty,” he began.

  “No. I’m a shit partner. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  That escalated quickly. “That’s only because you refuse to work at it. Being a partner is like being married. You should know that by now. You have to work at communication. Work at being able to predict how they’ll react to any given circumstance. It’s a full-time job that you’ve been half-assing. Get on it. Get back in the saddle. Go find Jennifer. Make her a freaking coffee. Just be a partner for once.”

  With his own words, he had an epiphany about Lara. He did believe that being partners was like being married, and if that was true, he was never going to marry Lara. She wasn’t interested in sharing, or being vulnerable with him, unless she was forced to. He could never get beyond her shell. There were no cracks in it, no weak spots. And he didn’t want to be with someone he couldn’t share his life with. Both the beautiful and the ugly parts. His inner fears, his constant worry about his family.

  Something uncoiled within him. A strand of stress released. He took a deep breath. Ty got up and opened the door, almost taking out Lara, who was trying to come into the room.

  “So where are we?” Lara asked.

  Xander smirked for an instant, as if he wanted to hear Nick tell Lara what had just happened.

  Nick gave him a look. “Xander was about to put Beckett Clarke’s Facebook profile on the screen so we can see if there are any clues to where he is.

  “Good,” she said, sitting down, eyes on the screen. It was blank. She looked at Xander and frowned.

  “I’m sorry. I was distracted for a second.”

  Lara turned a quizzical look to him, and he just shrugged. She shrugged, too, and settled back into her chair, leaning all the way back, and putting her booted feet on the table.

  Nick smiled to himself. He was free. A little sad, but free.

  * * *

  Clarke’s Facebook timeline was...a little boring, that was for sure. There was very little personal about it, but Lara guessed that was because he clearly displayed who he worked for, so it was reflecting a professional rather than personal image.

  There were business articles about communications and tech financials. There were articles about how BlackBerry was so much better than the iPhone, and a bunch of social issues, that Lara assumed dovetailed neatly into their clients’ beliefs, too. There were some sponsored articles from BlackBerry, and Clarke seemed to have liked quite a few of the ones that showed new functionality. Yup. He was dull. At least on Facebook.

  “Where’s James?” Lara asked, still reading the headlines on Clarke’s posts.

  “In the bullpen, still trying to track down other victims. He said he needed space,” Xander said.

  She needed to talk to him. Make sure he was doing okay. Every conversation they’d had since his brother’s death had been fraught with tension, which was understandable. He’d done a great job with Penelope Porterini, which showed just how professional he could be, even when he was hurting and angry. She admired him for that.

  “There’s something,” Nick said. “Does that look like a photo he took? The cabin there. Could he be off grid at a cabin?”

  “There’s no tag on it, and like most tech people, he’s turned off his location notification, so no one can see where he’s posting from. Let me capture the image and see if our geophysical database comes up with anything that may give us a clue to its whereabouts.”

  “What are the odds?” Lara asked. She’d used the geo database once before and came up empty.

  Xander bobbed his head from side to side. “Hit or miss, really. Obviously it helps that this photo is taken out in the country. So it might pick up the tree type, or the other flora in the shot and give us a rough location, but there’s no landscape to triangulate, so...yeah. Impossible to tell.”

  Lara sighed. “Well, it’s worth a shot.” She took control of the Facebook feed as Xander entered the photo into the database. She scrolled down. “It looks like we’re getting into last year. I can’t imagine anything that far back giving us a clue, can you?” she asked the room.

  “Probably not,” agreed Nick. “Pull up his email instead.”

  Lara had it up in seconds. Her eyes settled on the last email Clarke’s boss had received from him. “Huh.” She’d seen something...hmm.

  “Huh what?” Nick asked.

  Lara pulled her feet off the table and dragged a phone toward her. She dialed the number on Clarke’s email footer, and put it on speakerphone.

  A voicemail told her that their overseas clients were important to them, and gave a different number for an out-of-time-zone personal assistant. She dialed it.

  A woman picked up. “Beckett Clarke’s office, how may I be of assistance?”

  Lara raised her eyebrows slightly at the formality of the response. “Good evening. This is the FBI office in—”

  “Yes. I can see that. Our telephone caller ID is the best in the business. You’re calling from the FBI office, in a conference room designated CMU.” Her clipped tones make Lara sit up.

  “This is Special Agent Lara Grant.”

  “What can I do to help you, Special Agent Grant?”

  “Can you tell me which brand of cell phone is issued to your staff? Mr. Clarke in particular?”

  “All the executives have BlackBerry phones issued to them. They are by far the most secure.”

  Lara nodded. Excitement buzzed through her. She paged up the Facebook timeline again. “Is there any possibility that Mr. Clarke would have an iPhone for his personal use?”

  The voice at the other end of the line scoffed. “No. One of the conditions he made when he got here. No Apple products. I had to give up my fifty-inch Mac screen. I was upset by that. The one I have now isn’t nearly as—”

  “Do you know why?” Lara asked, touching her own beloved iPhone through her pants pocket.

  “Well...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He said it was because of the sweatshops they used in Asia, but that didn’t make sense to me because a lot of phone manufacturers have factories in Asia. I actually think it was because he was once turned down for a job there.” She cleared her throat. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s our secret. Thank you for your time.” Lara hung up and grabbed a laser pointer from one of the pen trays. She clicked it on and aimed it at the email.

  “Look at the bottom. It says ‘sent from my iPhone.’”

  Xander’s mouth dropped open. “So...”

  “I think we’re going to have to assume two things. One—Beckett Clarke has not disappeared of his own accord. And two—the Whisperer uses an iPhone.” Lara punctuated the numbers by poking the table with her index finger.

  “How did I not see that?” Xander said under his breath.

  “You’re brilliant in a different way,” Nick consoled.

  Xander pointed in Lara’s direction. “But I want to be brilliant like that.”

  “Don’t we all,” Nick said with a tig
ht smile. “Let’s not forget that this is bad news. We now have one definite and one probable hostage and we have no idea where either is. Let’s get everyone in here for this. We need to spread ourselves even thinner now.”

  They sat in silence, and suddenly Lara realized that Nick had obliquely given her an order. “Don’t get up. I’ll call everyone in.” She went out into the bullpen. James was on the phone so she mouthed to him and pointed at the conference room.

  He nodded.

  Ty and Jennifer were sitting in the kitchen area. Lara almost did a double take, but she carefully concealed her surprise. “Hey, guys. New development. Regroup in the conference room?”

  They nodded and scraped their chairs back.

  Christina was the last. She had a separate office with special air filtering and a highly coveted cooling system to protect her equipment. Lara pushed open the door and was about to open her mouth but Christina held up a finger for a second, not taking her eyes off her screen. Her hand returned to the keyboard again until she paused, and hit Enter. Then she looked up and smiled at Lara. “What’s up?”

  “Nick’s requesting the pleasure of everyone’s company in the conference room.”

  Christina nodded, checked her screen again, and pushed back her wheeled chair to follow Lara.

  With everyone back in the conference room when Lara entered, she slid around the wall and leaned next to James. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Yup,” he said with brusque efficiency.

  She didn’t glare at him, as she would have a week ago. She knew he was burning from the inside out about his brother, and he was being way more professional than she’d been when her personal life had tripped her up the year before. She rolled her eyes at herself. Less tripped her up, and more body-assaulted her and shoved her in an industrial washing machine. She was fine now, but could still feel those emotional bruises when she prodded them, or something else did.

  Her thoughts turned to Jacob. She was going to call Sally in the morning to make sure the foster family checked out. She knew what Nick had told her, but she wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. She was sure they would check out. After all, you’d hope they wouldn’t place at-risk kids with problem foster families...but she’d heard terrible things in the past about abusive families just taking in kids to get money from the state. But if what Nick said was true about their previous foster kids loving it there, then maybe she should just relax about the whole thing.